Daisy Ridley leaps from Star Wars to plain awe making Murder on the Orient Express with a line-up of acting legends
Director Kenneth Branagh made the British actor audition for her role in the film remake of the 1974 murder mystery classic. Having at first felt intimidated by the all-star cast, she soon grew to enjoy her second major movie role
Kenneth Branagh had a brilliant twist for a pivotal Murder on the Orient Express scene in which Daisy Ridley, as beautiful Mary Debenham, confronts obnoxious fellow passenger Gerhard Hardman (Willem Dafoe).
The director thought space age for the moment with Star Wars breakout Ridley on the opulent 1930s train. “I said to Daisy that she could certainly pull out a light sabre and toast him where it hurts,” Branagh recalls.
Ridley, 25, says she was too nervous to truly appreciate that humour early in the remake of the 1974 mystery movie based on Agatha Christie’s beloved crime novel. Murder on the Orient Express, which opens in the US on Friday, was only Ridley’s second major movie role after exploding to universal fame in her film debut – as Rey in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
That confrontation was Ridley’s first scene in front of an acting ensemble that included Branagh (as Christie’s famed detective Hercule Poirot), Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi as fellow Orient Express passengers (and murder suspects).
“I honestly had no room for jokes in my mind that day. I was so freaking nervous,” says Ridley. “My hands were fully shaking, I thought, ‘I cannot do this in scene with everyone around.’”
